Cinder and Smoke
by Ellie 5192
Summary: "Your world is not our world. Your ways don't fit in this place. Stop trying", she says. And underneath he can hear what she's really saying- what she's warning them about. What she's silently screaming. 'We're already lost'. Darkfic AU


_This story is sat about late season 7ish (2004, for arguments sake). It is technically an AU story, but can be read as semi-cannon. There are some hints at Jack/Sarah, and a few characters of my own creation in here._

_This is my first attempt at darker subject matter, and I was both excited and nervous to write something like this. It is intended to be a one-shot. Rating for implied apocalyptic themes, violence, character deaths, swearing, and all the good stuff that comes with a darkfic._

_As always, I don't own the characters, or the show, nor do I make profit from this story. I've read and read, but without a beta, you may have to point out any mistakes I missed._

_Enjoy, and please let me know what you think._

-0-0-0-0-0-

Your world is not our world. Your ways don't fit in this place. Stop trying_, she says. There's a look in her eyes- a familiar glint beyond the obvious lifelessness that makes his blood run cold. He doesn't want to believe her. _

_It would be as weak as surrendering. _

_But he can't stop the thought from festering in his mind like a bad sore. _

_Playing like a broken record. _

_And underneath he can hear what she's really saying- what she's warning them about. _

_What she's silently screaming._

_We're already lost. We're already lost. We're already lost. We're already lost._

-0-0-0-0-0-

When SG-1 step through the quantum mirror they have no intention of staying in this reality they've fallen into. Because in all honesty, they truly did _fall _into it. A wrong step, a hand grasping the nearest person for stability, another trying to stop the first from toppling, and the three of them found themselves in another reality, the fourth left standing only a foot away, in another world.

_One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind_, Jack thinks, and rolls his eyes, because going to the moon and going to another universe are hardly the same thing.

It's made clear in the first instant that Teal'c is not to follow, but that he's to stay there, though he suspects that the team will come straight back through.

Only, they don't and judging by their expressions, there is a force just beyond the dark doorway behind them. Jack looks back to him once, his expression clear.

_Don't follow. Just wait, so we'll know it's the right reality. We'll be right back._

They walk out of the room, guns raised, and Teal'c sees Daniel say something that Jack ignores.

They round the corner and disappear.

The door, slowly swinging open behind them, reveals a corridor of the SGC. Dark, abandoned, unused.

Like a ghost town.

Like a lost soul.

-0-0-0-0-0-

She's running. Her feet hit the pavement hard, her gait strong and even, and just as she thinks she can take the stitch in her side no longer, her legs kick into another gear, and she rounds the corner of a destroyed building just in time to feel a staff blast rip past her shoulder.

The warmth of the almost-contact sends a jolt of fear down her spine that she hasn't felt in a long time, and the reminder of her own mortality gives her enough energy to keep running, because she'll be damned if this Jaffa is going to take her down now. Not when they are so close.

It takes her another twenty minutes to lose the tracker, and another ten after that to get to safe territory.

The 'safe-zone' is retreating further and further each day, because although Anubis is long gone, his Jaffa are relentless in their advance.

Charlie greets her by taking her gun wordlessly at the hidden entrance to the bunker - a crude cave-like hideaway they created on top of Cheyenne Mountain when they were forced to blow up the main entrance- and tells her that the digging is almost complete. They've almost broken through the debris to the tunnels that lay ten stories below through solid rock- the tunnels that will eventually lead them lower, to the Stargate.

It's an impressive feat, given they're working with shovels and a single jackhammer, but it's been a year and a half since they started, so everyone's a little tired of dirt.

Their ticket out of here is back through the Stargate, so long as the computers aren't fried and the machines are still hooked up to the power grid. Their one saving grace is that the Jaffa are yet to find the power station, so some buildings- those that remain standing- may still be connected to main power.

It's one hell of a Hail Mary pass, but these days they seem to be running on two things-prayers and moonshine.

She tries to steer clear of the former.

_Good going little bro,_ she says with a grin that looks so much like their father it hurts.

He only nods and shoulders the weapon by its strap, and she can't help but think the M4 looks too big for her baby brother- the boy she has vague memories of as a child, when he was only an infant, the two of them in the backyard of their childhood house that's separated from them now by a few streets and a battlefield.

At seventeen, with broad shoulders, their dad's build and a lifetime raised in this hell-hole, he's hardly the same boy, but sometimes- when a corny knock-knock joke gets told or a Simpson's line gets thrown around- she sees the boy he used to be immerge from hiding, dormant underneath, but still there, like a tiny flicker of hope in this hopeless place.

And she wonders when it was exactly he stopped seeing the old her hidden in _her_ eyes. If he would even recognise her now if she came back.

She turns gracefully on the ball of her foot like a practiced ballet dancer and walks into the cave, passing by the two guards armed to the nines, both of whom have been snaked, and lived to tell the tale, and would know down to their core if she wasn't who she said she was.

She feels the charred edge of the broken dog-tag catch on the skin of her chest, heaving as she tries to catch her breath, and it's her only reminder that they have to win.

They can't afford to lose anymore than they already have.

-0-0-0-0-0-

Dinner that night is a quiet affair, but nothing is ever really shared anymore.

Everyone is either too tired of running or too tired of fighting or just too _tired_ to speak, and most fall asleep just after sunset, because it's no longer about staying up to catch the 8:30 showing of Friends, but instead about being charged enough at sun-rise to survive another summer day fighting off the platoons of rogue Jaffa that are slowly closing in on their position.

And long ago they got used to the crack of gun fire in their sleep.

Of the feel of an entire city destroyed.

Because it does have its own feel, distinct from any other place on Earth. Or anywhere, she imagines.

The wind moves differently over rubble than it does over whole buildings.

The Colorado air tastes different after a mass slaughter than before it. Sweeter. With a hint of copper.

The constant smoke and ash and dirt in the air would have all those ozone-loving greenies crying out in agony, but of course, what do you expect when _nothing _is whole anymore.

But you get used to it.

You evolve.

You adapt.

You have to.

Sink or swim, princess, her father used to say. Sink or swim.

And she wishes that she was back in the pool, getting pushed in the deep end, instead of waiting for the world to slowly end.

Because there is no denying it.

It will end.

Sooner or later they will give up. Surrender. Or perhaps just lie down and not get up.

What's left to fight for anyway?

-0-0-0-0-0-

When the footsteps echo from far around the corner of the dark, abandoned corridor, SG1 immediately know what to do. They press themselves into the gaps of the SGC walls, Jack in front, then Sam, then Daniel- in order of who has the most field experience and who has the best aim.

They listen again, and hear the running of a group- five, maybe six people. The footfalls are not of the light, cautious, military variety, but of the rough and tumble, get-in-and-shoot-and-get-out-alive variety- the kind you'd expect from a paramilitary group that's had more experience than training.

The voice that stops the group surprises them.

Young and female, and perhaps barely old enough to be at college let alone barking orders like she's been doing it half her life. The words are muffled, but there's no mistaking the snap in her tone, the volume that's soft enough that SG1 strain to hear, but clear enough that her message is to be followed to the letter.

Sure enough, when they hear the tell-tale pitch of the words 'move out' reverberate through the hall, half the footsteps start, then slowly fade into the distance, while the other half get closer, rounding in on SG1's position.

Signalling down the hall, Jack leads them back the way they came, into one of the many empty rooms they searched.

Even as quiet as they've been trained to be, he knows the mysterious girl heard them.

He can feel the change in the air.

The way his hairs stand on end.

The way his ears strain of their own accord.

The way Sam's shoulder's tense in front of him, telling him he's not the only one.

The footsteps behind them suddenly stop; the resulting sound is like the end of Part 1 of Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in E Minor, as the final note rings in the ears of the audience moments after the bows have left the strings. There is a ringing down the hallway, and he can't even hear his own heartbeat over the deafening sound of silence.

Peaking through the smallest gap he purposely left in the door, Jack sees one young man- perhaps late twenties- aiming his gun from behind the safety of the corner wall, his eye barely visible over the barrel of a rifle that looks far too big for him.

Just as Jack is about to turn, a movement in the corner of his eye stops him.

Suddenly there is another barrel in sight, right in front of his face, almost touching his nose, its owner stepping from her place against the same wall as the door, her body previously hidden by the angle.

Jack looks up and meets her eyes beyond the barrel she's holding so expertly towards him, her face unreadable beyond the mask of hostility.

Judging by the sounds of guns being placed on the ground behind him, his team-mates have come to the same conclusion as he.

-0-0-0-0-0-

_Kate, you can't_, he had said, and the way his eyes pleaded with her- begged her not to go- almost made her cave. Charlie was all she had left of her old life.

Him and the dog-tags.

And it was not lost on her that she was all he had too, and if the roles had been reversed, she would have begged in vain just as he did.

_I'm the only one who knows what's down there, Charlie, _she had said_. I'm the only one who remembers. I _have _to go_.

He never expected any different, because he was not the one who wore the dog-tags. She was. Because she was all their father, and he was all their mother, and twelve years ago Jack O'Neill told Sarah O'Neill he was coming home from the Gulf, and it may have taken him four months, but he did it, and she waited patiently, knowing he would.

Kate was Jack, and Charlie was Sarah, so he would wait in the relative safety of the tiny bunker they called home while she went into the unknown.

While she went inside the place they swore they would never go back to.

-0-0-0-0-0-

_Up_, she orders, and there's a competency in her actions that surprised him, because looking at her more closely he sees she's surely no more than nineteen and she's slim and pretty, and if he was any judge of body-shape, a dancer lie dormant somewhere in those agile limbs.

But Jack's too distracted to notice that right now, because her expression shifts the moment she gets a good look at his face in the light, and though he commends her efforts to keep her eyes harsh and her face impassive, the way she drains of colour tells him what he already knows in his gut.

What the big, brown eyes, and light brown hair and tell-tale O'Neill chin had already told him.

This girl is, in a sick twisted way, related to him.

And he has a feeling that he might just be her father.

-0-0-0-0-0-

She can do nothing but allow her mask to stay in place- to allow the barrier to close between her and him. A trait she inherited from Jack himself, no doubt.

The black-ops, lone wolf stare.

She cannot see this man as her father. Cannot allow the thought to even cross her mind.

It might just be the straw that breaks her back.

Instead she ushers the three people out of the room with her M16, their hands above their heads without being asked. Her two lackeys come out from hiding behind the wall, lowering their guns only enough to get a good look at the people who are supposed to be dead.

The father of their friend and leader.

The pretty scientist from Washington who was killed for being smarter than the goa'uld- for being the one who built the dialling device. Her hair had been longer, she hadn't been military, but it was the same woman all-right.

The archaeologist. The man that never came back. The one commended posthumously by the President himself for being right about the pyramids all along, and for being on the team that went through to stop one of the aliens on the first sanctioned mission.

The mission Captain Jonas Hanson died on, shot by an alien weapon they'd all come to know in time. A man once engaged to Samantha Carter herself, if the rumours of the day were to be believed.

These men had seen Daniel and Sam murdered on national television-part of the first of many mass-murders the goa'uld displayed over the airwaves before shutting down all global communication. Jack, on the other hand, was murdered right in front of them, running into an ambush along with half the other soldiers stationed out of Cheyenne Mountain in that first year of fighting, back when there was hope, and young eager faces full of promise and ready to die for their country.

Of course, this was several years ago, before they regained the mountain as a stronghold, then had to shut it down as the Jaffa drew closer.

Before the entire city fell.

Before the huge ships finally left, leaving nothing behind worth fight for except a distant memory of the colour green and an uncompromising desire to retain what little they knew about 'Old Earth'.

-0-0-0-0-0-

They take them to an interview room, ignoring the bodies that occasionally litter the floor, years old, rotting, as they make their way through the abandoned halls. Of all the things they've seen, this is one of the worst sights for SG1, not because of the subject matter- they've certainly seen much worse- but because this is their turf. Their home base. This is the SGC, and not only is it dead, but it's littered with dead, and for all the shit they've seen and done, the SGC is supposed to infallible, not broken.

Not this.

Never this.

-0-0-0-0-0-

It doesn't take long for the intruders to explain what happened- where they're from, why they're here.

In the end it doesn't take much for Kate to believe them, either. What other explanation could there be, other than she's finally, wonderfully crazy? Lost it. Three fries short, and all that jazz.

And it doesn't surprise her when they offer to help.

Well, actually, Daniel offers to help, in that innocent, naive 'let us help you' kind of way.

Kate decides then that it's time these imposters see what the world is really like.

She keeps an eye on the man that is not her father, well aware that he's no doubt noticed the family resemblance. That he's trying to figure out where she fits in this picture.

She wonders if she ever existed where he's from. Judging by his lack of reaction, she doesn't think so.

She's not sure if that makes her feel better or worse.

-0-0-0-0-0-

Sam looks outside the bunker- at the rubble and the dead trees and the dead bodies that mark the sites of battle around the mountain and down into the city. From their place on the top of the mountain they can see the remnants of Colorado Springs- of the high-rises that toppled and the houses that crumbled under heavy fire. She knows it looks like the scenes in Terminator, when John's all grown up.

Not that it's comforting to know that.

There is enough shelter down there to house the few dwindling soldiers of Anubis- that gold-clad asshole that came through the Earth 'gate seven years ago and returned in his ships aplenty, then left again five years later without taking his Jaffa with him.

Their war now is not one of theology, but of survival. There is barely enough to feed one group of misfits, let alone two. The Jaffa that are left in the Springs outnumber them two to one. In other cities it's more, in a select few they are the minority, but no matter the number, everyone left on Earth is now looking for their next meal, and with half the planet gone and the other half unusable to begin with, the two sides fight it out day and night. An endless battle against people much like themselves.

Dumped on some nowhere planet and abandoned by their God.

Kate sees a single tear fall from Major Carter's eye, and she envies her.

This woman still has the ability to cry.

-0-0-0-0-0-

They don't meet Charlie until a few hours later.

The reaction from Jack tells Kate all she needs to know. Charlie at least _existed_ in his world. He's obviously dead now- a thought which sickens her- but he existed when she didn't, and she can't help but think that maybe her existence shaped what this world became.

It's an egotistical thought, but wasn't there some theory about a butterfly and a volcano?

Or was it an earthquake?

The stories of yesteryear are hardly important anymore.

-0-0-0-0-0-

They allow SG1 to return to the room in the mountain with the mirror and get a message through to a Jaffa on the other side.

Kate's first reaction when she sees the tell-tale golden emblem on his head is to shoot, and she briefly wonders if the mirror will allow a bullet to pass from this reality into that one.

But her father is not an evil man, no matter where he's from, and she lowers her weapon and takes comfort in the fact that if the Jaffa even _thinks_ of touching the mirror, she has three guns to his one.

It is decided that SG1 will stay at least another day, and establish contact again later. The man on the other side nods- more like bows, she thinks- and assumes a cross-legged position on the floor, which strangely makes her want to smile. He doesn't look nearly as frightening when he's doing yoga.

She can't shake the feeling that she's seen him before, though, and it takes her a while, but she realises that the same man murdered Sam and Daniel on the T.V all those years ago, at the behest of the Golden Asshole.

She wonders who the crazy one is- her for believing their story, or them for having it in the first place.

-0-0-0-0-0-

On the second day Jack tries to give a little too much advice for their mission- tries to give her men a little too much hope- and Kate touches him for the first time. Grabbing his shoulder and pulling him around she doesn't fail to notice the shock on his face when she gasps. The expression of childlike bewilderment is so familiar but so distant in her memory that it takes her breath away, and the way his eyes narrow and his lips twitch tell her he has enough sympathy to realise what his sudden appearance is doing to her emotions.

It's for these same reasons that Charlie has tried to make himself scarce, though he lingers in the background like a shadow, studying his father with an intensity that borders on the compulsive. Eighteen months younger than herself, Charlie's memory of their parents is a little foggier- a little further out of reach. He remembers images and smells and words, but they're fragmented and incomplete, and almost idyllic in their simplicity.

He wants to remember the sound of Jack's voice.

Wants to remember the smell of his skin.

Wants to know what his parents talked about in hushed whispers at the kitchen bench between kisses, as he bounded inside with his boyish energy making his mouth run a million miles an hour.

Kate envies _him_ too.

She'd take the sick curiosity over the burning agony any day.

Late that day she yells at Jack for his interference- for his assumption that he knows _anything_ about this world and what they have all been through. He can't possibly understand what it's like to be here every day- to not have the luxury of a better home. To know that it would be so easy to just touch that mirror, if only half these people didn't also exist on the other side. To want to go back with them, but more than that, to want to stay here and fight with the lucky few who have managed to survive this long.

Her words strike a chord in Jack, and it takes her a moment to realise that for the first time in years she is _feeling._

White hot anger burns in the back of her throat.

-0-0-0-0-0-

_Your world is not our world. Your ways don't work in this place. Stop trying, _she says bitterly. There's a look in her eyes- a familiar glint beyond the obvious lifelessness that makes his blood run cold. He doesn't want to believe her. Doesn't want to imagine that she may have killed more men than he ever will. That she has seen more carnage than he has.

He can't believe her.

It would be as weak as surrendering this world to its fate.

But he can't stop the thought from festering in his mind like a bad sore, either.

Playing like a broken record.

And underneath he can hear what she's really saying- what she's warning him about.

What she's silently screaming.

_We're already lost. We're already lost. We're already lost. We're already lost._

-0-0-0-0-0-

A few hours later they all find themselves sitting by a fire outside the crude entrance to the mountain. SG1 is going home. They have no way of helping these people now, though Sam's sure that with a few days she can re-jig the power device back in their reality that will connect the gate to the Asgard homeworld.

Kate doesn't get her hopes up. They might not be here in five minutes, let alone a few days. The only reason Colorado Springs hadn't been hit from space in the first place was because Anubis wanted access to the Stargate, and didn't want to risk burying it or worse. When he didn't get it- when it all became too hard and the people too feisty- he jumped ship, never to be seen again.

He doesn't need to be there to make it hell.

The group heads to the control room to assess the damage done to the computers, and Kate is glad Sam's here. She really has no idea about the computer stuff. She's more of a 'shoot first, question later' kind of girl.

She can feel Jack's eyes cutting into her skin, but she refuses to acknowledge him. She's been slowly losing her resolve with him around, and with Charlie's reaction too, and these other two alive and well... the whole situation is catching up to her.

He looks her up and down, trying to make heads or tails of this girl who manages to act so brave while teetering on the verge of a complete breakdown.

Her clothes are in serious need of a wash and iron, ripped and stained as they are with dirt and blood and ash, and her hair is tired at the base of her skull in one of those rough ponytails that looks as though it's been slept on three nights in a row, and a simple pair of fake diamond studs peak out from under the loose strands, contradicting the mess of the rest of her, but strangely looking as though they may be the only things that truly belong. Or belonged there, a long time ago, when this world didn't look quite so bewildering. So sinister. So misplaced.

And all Jack can think is, she's right. She's been right about everything.

_Your world is not our world. Your ways don't fit in this place. Stop trying._

And he wonders just how far this reality fell to warrant his nineteen year old non-daughter being wiser then he could ever be.

-0-0-0-0-0-

SG1 leave with the promise of better things- of a way to contact a race of aliens who can help this lost world.

It's not enough and everyone knows it. The Asgard may already be dead, who knows? The replicators may have long wiped them out without SG-1's help.

But this world has been living on Hail Mary's since Anubis land here all those years ago, and they didn't stop when half the population was wiped in the first year, and they didn't stop when the mountain fell and took years to be reclaimed, and they still didn't stop when Anubis eventually left, leaving half his troops here as punishment for them not fulfilling his wishes to wipe out the unwilling.

They won't stop until this world is won.

By which side doesn't matter.

So Jack urges Sam and Daniel towards the open mirror, ignoring the worried expression of the Jaffa on the other side, and turns to face the stranger behind him.

She meets his gaze squarely, without batting an eye, and he's not sure if it's a sign of intense emotional strength, or if she's just shut herself of completely to thwart that imminent mental breakdown.

He doesn't even reach to touch her.

_We'll be back, Kate. I promise_

She doesn't break eye contact, but there's a twitch in the muscle- chink in the armour- that speaks of the pain that ripples constantly, relentlessly, underneath.

_He said those exact words the day he went running into that ambush_, she says bluntly. _Only, you sound different to him._

And he thinks that the one distinction- the way her name rolls unfamiliar off his tongue and his tone is untainted by living hell- might just be the only reminder they each have that they never were, nor ever will be, father and daughter.

And he thinks that it may just be the only thing which allows her to hope that they'll return.

Because her own Jack broke that exact promise and she has to believe that the fact that these two men are different means this one can deliver.

Jack doesn't even bother to ask if she wants to come, because he has the feeling that while she will never leave of her _own_ accord, she might just take up his offer to bring her and her brother back to their reality. And then he'd be dealing with two teenagers who don't want to be where they are, can't survive where they're from, and don't belong anywhere else.

Like some sick and twisted teen angst movie from the eighties.

Jack turns towards the mirror and he hears Kate walk away before he touches the stone face. She won't watch him leave.

Not this time.

-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-

When SG-1 try to redial back to the mysterious reality- the one with the deliberate red X on the floor of the storeroom- the mirror won't connect. They try for hours and hours to find it among the endless worlds that look dead or abandoned or both.

In the end they're forced to admit that it can't be found.

Won't be found.

They either don't need them after all, or SG-1 is too late, and the mirror is lying in pieces.

Does it really matter which option they believe to be true?

Should it matter?

Did that _world_ even matter?

_Ours is the only reality of consequence._

Not for Kate.


End file.
